


Petty or Perspective

by mayoho



Category: The Witcher (TV), Wiedźmin | The Witcher - All Media Types
Genre: Gen, Jaskier | Dandelion is a Noble, NOT Pre-slash, This is about messy at least 75 percent platonic feelings
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-19
Updated: 2020-12-19
Packaged: 2021-03-11 04:40:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,845
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28179270
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mayoho/pseuds/mayoho
Summary: Jaskier receives some awful news. He and Geralt have to deal with the consequences while also trying to preserve the status quo of their slightly emotionally stunted relationship.“It’s not really any of your concern. I don’t want to talk about it. It’s too petty,” Jaskier replied after a long, sullen pause.Geralt raised an eyebrow. Too petty wasn’t a concept he expected Jaskier to be familiar with.“Fine. I received word that my elder brother has died.”“That’s not petty,” Geralt responded with a cautious frown.“Oh no, it’s unbelievably petty. We weren’t close. Certainly not close enough to overcome my deep seated belief that anyone who dies in a jousting tournament had it coming. No. If I’m upset, it’s entirely hinged on how this affects me,” Jaskier laughed mirthlessly.
Relationships: Geralt z Rivii | Geralt of Rivia & Jaskier | Dandelion
Comments: 7
Kudos: 56





	Petty or Perspective

**Author's Note:**

> thanks to [soymimikyu](https://soymimikyu.tumblr.com/) for beta reading!

Jaskier had been gnawing at his knuckles, an uncharacteristic frown creasing his brow. Geralt hummed, loud enough to draw Jaskier’s attention over the bustle of the tavern. “You’ve been... not yourself since you got that letter.”

A messenger in Redanian livery had met them at the tavern. It must have taken him considerable effort to find Jaskier, given the circuitous root they’d been taking through the Temerian countryside, Geralt picking up contracts and Jaskier seeking audiences to test his new songs. Jaskier’s face had been carefully blank when he broke the seal on the message and he had wandered listlessly to the table where they now sat as he skimmed the page. The messenger had frowned until Geralt pressed some coin into his hand. Geralt hadn’t minded the expense—Jaskier was free with his coin when he had it. It was no trouble for Geralt to do the same. 

“It’s not really any of your concern. I don’t want to talk about it. It’s too petty,” Jaskier replied after a long, sullen pause. 

Geralt raised an eyebrow. Too petty wasn’t a concept he expected Jaskier to be familiar with. 

“Fine. I received word that my elder brother has died.”

“That’s not petty,” Geralt responded with a cautious frown. 

“Oh no, it’s unbelievably petty. We weren’t close. Certainly not close enough to overcome my deep seated belief that anyone who dies in a jousting tournament had it coming. No. If I’m upset, it’s entirely hinged on how this affects me,” Jaskier laughed mirthlessly. 

It stood to reason that Jaskier was the sort of person whose lineage might matter in a concrete sense. Geralt had always had a clear idea of Jaskier’s social standing. Though the man generally spoke with a middle class Oxenfurt accent, he made no particular effort to conceal his foppish sensibilities or natural imperiousness that only came from a certain set of lived experiences. Geralt hadn’t given the matter much thought as Jaskier didn’t draw attention to it. 

But none of this was Geralt’s concern. He remained quiet, watching Jaskier fidget. Over the many years of their mutual acquaintanceship, Geralt had familiarized himself with Jaskier’s many different fidgets. There was the constant, fluid motion indicative of nothing but Jaskier’s inability to sit still; the sharp, wild gestures that meant the man was angry and veering swiftly towards confrontational; the dramatic, floating sweeps of his hands that accompanied a self-satisfied monologue. Now, his fingers squeezed into fists before releasing to dig into the table arrhythmically. It was jarring and uncomfortable. 

Geralt quickly set about finishing his food, turning Jaskier’s confession over as he ate. His criticism of jousting seemed harsh—Jaskier did have a deep running judgemental streak—but it had been a long time since Geralt had watched a tilt and it was possible the sport was no longer valuable practice for a knight preparing for combat. 

His frown deepened as he recalled Jaskier’s attempt to explain the contemporary rules for a fencing bout, the way he had gestured expansively, eyes shining bright as he refused to concede Geralt’s well reasoned points on the utter stupidity of right of way even though he was certain Jaskier didn’t actually disagree.

Geralt wiped up the last bit of his stew with the last hunk of bread and assessed Jaskier’s largely untouched plate. On principle, Geralt was deeply opposed to food waste but there were other concerns to weigh. Geralt fished the few pieces of meat out of the stew and pocketed the hunk of bread, first wrapping it in a clean handkerchief. Jaskier didn’t react.

Geralt stood, tossed an appropriate tip on the table, and gently shook Jaskier’s shoulder. “Come on.”

Jaskier startled slightly before deliberately uncurling his fingers and rising to his feet. Geralt suspected that if the bard didn’t keep his nails so short, there would have been welts on his palms, but as it stood, Jaskier’s hands remained unmarred. 

Geralt’s instincts told him they needed to get outside. His travel companion looked a bit like a cornered animal. Hopefully the rhythm and distraction of walking to help him organize his thoughts. Regardless, it was a clear day with a light breeze to mellow the last clinging heat of summer—a day better spent walking than pissing away coin in a tavern. Several minutes out of town and down a sunny meadow path, Jaskier relaxed enough to verbalize his inner monologue. 

“This is your fault, Geralt. Don’t look at me like that. It really is. If I hadn’t travelled with you, didn’t watch you do what you do how you do it, I wouldn’t know—wouldn’t know how much inept local governance hurts people. If I had stayed in Oxenfurt or ensconced myself in some Court somewhere; it’s not fair. I want to do right, but I don’t know if I can. I am monumentally unsuited for this, in both temperament and training. I just—”

Jaskier paused and looked at Geralt searchingly, his eyes welling with unshed tears. This was not an unusual occurrence. Jaskier felt a great deal in a way that ached to spring forth into the world, but Geralt had noted that his companion was not one to cry outright, at least not in front of him. He stared back at Jaskier, waiting for the man to say something that had enough sense and context for Geralt to respond in any meaningful way. 

“I did what I was supposed to and this is how I’m repaid for it? Well, I say ‘did what I was supposed to’. But I really did try, and for a given value of ‘what I was supposed to’, I did. Oxenfurt educated bard, published poet, and occasional lecturer is a perfectly respectable position for the second son of a fucking Viscount. I suppose my family would have preferred I didn’t traipse off across the Continent and become a household name...”

“With a Witcher, no less,” Geralt interjected with a healthy dose of self depreciation. 

Jaskier waved a hand dismissively, “They weren’t like that.”

His tone seemed to indicate that there were plenty of things they were like, but Geralt didn’t press. Quite frankly, he didn’t want to know.

“That’s not the point. The point is, I made my own way in the world—as I was supposed to—and I am expected to give that up and take on a responsibility that I have never once wanted just because my brother was a careless prick who didn’t have the good grace to produce an heir before stupidly, pointlessly, and ignobly snuffing it?” Jaskier waved his hands about in clear distress before shoving them into the pockets of his trousers and stalking on ahead, shoulders tense. 

“I’m sorry,” Geralt said noncommittally. He knew what sorts of things one was expected to say under trying circumstances and sometimes said them. 

“You shouldn’t be. It is, as I said, extraordinarily petty. Other people have real problems,” Jaskier replied without turning around. 

“Hmm,” Geralt said, not quite agreeably. 

“Fuck. It’s wrong of me, but I won’t give my life up. I worked hard at this.” Jaskier spun abruptly and began to pace back and forth on the narrow path through the meadow. It took barely three steps before he had to turn to pace back the other direction. Geralt reached out and gently shoved Jaskier between the shoulder blades. They were outside. For a reason. That reason being that there was space to walk. 

Jaskier stumbled slightly, but, thankfully, began moving forward again. He was quiet for a long moment, fingers tugging through his hair, but Geralt could tell from the degree of tension in his back that he had lost some of the frantic anger. Jaskier turned around again but kept moving down the path, trusting Geralt to prevent him from colliding with any unexpected obstacles. 

“If I simply failed to turn up, that would, I don’t know. It would probably not be good.” Jaskier looked at Geralt like he wanted an opinion. Geralt made an annoyed grumble. It was mostly self disgust, but going by the other man’s face, Jaskier had not divined that. Which was, well, something. Jaskier had developed a talent for reading volumes into the noises Geralt sometimes preferred over speech. 

“Jaskier,” Geralt sighed. “I know shit-all about this kind of court politics. But you think best when you’re talking so—” he gestured for Jaskier to continue, a frown creasing his brow. 

Geralt did not consider himself above a few lies to ease himself out of an uncomfortable conversation and did not see it as a conflict with his general commitment to honesty, but he wasn’t quite sure why he had said that. In his long decades on the Path, he had picked up a great deal of first hand experience with the sort of things that happened during sudden power vacuums in local government—had seen a myriad of ways these sorts of things could go poorly, very poorly, or alright and had his opinions as to what sorts of things did and didn’t work. But he had a strong desire, a desire that he did not wish to examine, to not influence Jaskier’s decision. 

Jaskier frowned like he had intuited some of Geralt’s thoughts and knew he was lying, but he turned back around rather than push. Geralt felt like he had failed in some way (though this was exactly the outcome he had been aiming for). His frown deepened, but he made no further comment. 

It wasn’t terribly difficult to watch the tense lines of Jaskier’s body and wait him out, or so Geralt told himself even as his palms itched with inaction. Jaskier was incapable of maintaining silence for any length of time. Geralt could wait. 

He could. 

“I maintain this,” Jaskier made an encompassing gesture as he began to speak again with a sigh, “is your fault, Geralt. But, treating that as a forgone conclusion, I have no choice but to do something. Can’t be a complete derelict and abandon all sense of duty; it’s off the table. I must either head to Lettenhove myself or send some sort of response, with some sort of reason to stall. And go off and find some loophole in succession law in the libraries at Oxenfurt? It’d have to be terribly obscure, my family genealogy is not complicated. It’s just a Viscountship, not some Crown that’s been contested over the generations. And I’d be manufacturing a secession crisis, which is, well, a crisis. Exactly what we’re trying to avoid. It wouldn’t work anyway. I’d hardly be allowed to do something like that. I’d be laughed at for even trying. There are magistrates and whatnot. And I’m sure they’re already machinating, just waiting to see which of them will be able to rope me in to give their plans the thinnest veneer of respectability.”

“You’re good at that.” Geralt said. 

“What?”

“The thinnest veneer of respectability. Might even say it’s your specialty.” Geralt heard his own voice come out crueler than he intended. The whole conversation had him unreasonably on edge. 

Jaskier’s face did something that poorly approximated a smile. He was quiet for a very long moment. As much as Geralt had, on occasion, longed for his travel companion to stop talking for even just a few moments, he had come to regard Jaskier’s silences with trepidation. 

“No,” Jaskier said softly as he stopped and turned around to look vaguely past Geralt’s shoulder. He chewed at his lower lip for a moment. “I have to know. What is that supposed to mean?”

Geralt frowned, hard enough it was going to give him a headache if he kept it up. Jaskier watched him through his eyelashes, hands clasped together in eerie, uncharacteristic stillness. 

“Hrmm.”

Jaskier’s fingers twitched, nearly imperceptibly. Geralt wasn’t sure if he would have noticed had he not been a Witcher. But he did notice. And couldn’t unnotice. 

“You have...” Geralt paused, searching for words. It had been a joke, a poor one, but he watched Jaskier who was staring at him now and starting to fidget. 

“You have skills, enough of them that this might go well for you if you went about things your own way,” Geralt squeezed the back of his neck. He was good at telling people what they wanted to hear—it was a skillset he cultivated carefully and practiced just enough not to lose his edge. Why was it so difficult now? “Shocking as it is given your general temperament, you are not easily manipulated. And you can get people to do what you want, even if it’s through sheer bloody mindedness.”

Jaskier sucked on his lower lip. It was a wonder his lips weren’t more chapped than they were with the amount he did that. 

“So you think I should go off and—” Jaskier waved his hand vaguely, “Viscount, then?”

Geralt had a very strong memory of Jaskier, easy and laughing, telling him “parts of speech are a constraint for the unliberated and should not limit one in expressing oneself as one sees fit” when he had insisted ‘Witcher’ was not a verb. That was not how Jaskier looked now—far from it. He knew the face Jaskier was making, knew it well even though Jaskier had rarely made it at him. Other people had. It was the face that said a line had been crossed and there was no longer a safe thing to say. However Geralt responded now, it would be taken as both more and less than it was meant. Geralt felt his hackles go up and there wasn’t much he could do about it. 

“I thought you had already come to that conclusion yourself,” Geralt said through gritted teeth. Jaskier’s face did something Geralt couldn’t make heads or tails of before smoothing out into a congenial mask—ever the performer.

“Fine then. No use dithering about.” Jaskier stalked off towards the tavern. 

It took a long moment for Geralt to gather himself, though nothing had really happened. When he finally followed the bard—or Viscount now, he supposed—back up the path, he made no effort to lengthen his stride and catch up. 

Though Geralt well and truly dawdled, going so far as to collect some promising herbs he spotted along the path, Jaskier was still at the tavern when Geralt returned. Jaskier had his gelding tacked and waiting on the path, but he was dithering, exactly as he had said there was no cause to do.

“Geralt,” Jaskier said, just softly enough that Geralt could credibly pretend not to have heard. But he didn’t. He walked over to Jaskier, offering his hand for the horse to snuff at. 

Jaskier sighed. He sounded annoyed, but when Geralt looked at him, the bard looked some strange combination of wistful and fond. “You said I ought to go about this my own way and I’m not suited to being stuck in one place for months at a time. I’ll figure something out. You’ll not be rid of me this easily.”

He smiled, a fidgety expression that didn’t seem convinced it ought to be there, and Geralt felt himself smile back. He didn’t duck his head to hide it. It wouldn’t do to encourage Jaskier too much, but right now it felt cruel to deny him this small gesture. Jaskier’s smile settled and his posture relaxed fluidly over the course of a few even breaths. He reached out a hand to squeeze Geralt’s shoulder, fingers strong enough to feel through the reinforced leather. 

“I meant it, what I said before, Geralt,” Jaskier’s voice was low and intimate in a way it rarely was. “This is your fault. You made me a better person.”

Geralt didn’t really know what he was doing with his face, but he felt his pupils dilate and his heart rate kick up a notch. Jaskier’s smile widened. “No need to look so horrified! You did a valuable public service. I was well on my way to being a proper terror. Not that I completely avoided that, but you know.”

“I didn’t do anything. You just needed to... grow up a bit.” Geralt quite suddenly found it too difficult to keep looking at Jaskier and occupied himself with the pressing task of petting the horse’s velvety muzzle. 

“Ok, Geralt,” Jaskier sounded unreasonably fond. Geralt had to know what sort of face Jaskier was making and the sight made something in his chest tight, but he didn’t look away. “I guess I’d best be off then.”

“Yes,” Geralt grimaced. But he reached out to squeeze Jaskier’s shoulder and Jaskier listed firmly into Geralt’s space. “Safe travels.”

“I. Umm, thank you. You too,” Jaskier said as he mounted the horse. He did not have Geralt’s skill at horsemanship, but he had the competence to get up with minimal fuss despite the lack of a mounting block.

Geralt stood and watched as Jaskier rode down the path. When he turned to look back, Geralt gave him an awkward little wave. It felt ridiculous, but it was worth the way Jaskier’s face lit up.

**Author's Note:**

> I did a pretty sizable amount of research on period appropriate english inheritance laws (I was lazy and it's just so much easier to do casual research on things that happened in a country that speaks your language). And then, of course, very little of that actually ended up in the fic. 
> 
> You can be found on [tumblr](https://littlestsnicket.tumblr.com/), if you like. 
> 
> (And if Andrzej Sapkowski thinks it's important for readers to know if characters prefer mares, geldings, or stallions, it can be important to me too.)


End file.
